Eastern and Central Africa Programme for Agricultural Policy Analysis
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A Programme of the Association for Strengthening Agricultural
Research in Eastern and Central Africa
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Electronic Newsletter
03May 2007--Volume 10 Number 08
NEWS
9-11 May 2007:Natural Resources Management and Use, Regional Workshop, Entebbe, Uganda
THE GENDER IMPACT OF TRADE LIBERALIZATION ON FOOD SYSTEMS AND AGRICULTURAL MARKETS
Women are directly affected by governments’ failure to realize the right to food and are too often negatively affected by macro-economic policy changes. They must be more involved to change this situation. Alexandra Spieldoch, the Director of Trade and Global Governance Programme at the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy (IATP) highlights the global trends in relation to deregulation and agriculture trade and provides gender analysis around women and agricultural trade. He concludes his paper with reflections and makes a few suggestions for future research possibilities.
T
HE current economic liberalization agenda supports market concentration, promotes inequity, and undermines the right to food. Additionally, the fact that trade rules and human rights goals have tended to be addressed separately in policy making is a serious problem in improving food security and food sovereignty. The right to food, which is part of the UN Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, was ratified in 1948. To date, it lacks clear instruments for implementation, posing a challenge for human rights activists. The UN Commission on Human Rights views the link between poverty and hunger as particularly problematic for rural areas and recommends that countries basepolicymaking on food security needs, sustainablemanagement of natural resources, food safety,hunger and poverty reduction, institution-building,and land reform.
Research on ways to strengthen the definitionand the implementation of the right to foodin gender-appropriate ways is greatly needed.The Beijing Platform for Action (BPFA), signed by all UN member states in 1995, acknowledgesthat women must participate “as bothagents and beneficiaries in the developmentprocess. In the BPFA, governments agreed toensure that trade would not have an adverse impacton women’s economic activities (both newand traditional); to implement gender impactanalyses of economic policymaking to ensureequal opportunities for women; to make legislativereforms to give women equal rights toeconomic resources (including property, creditand new technology); to measure unpaid workon family farms; to recognize and strengthenwomen’s role in food security and as producers;and to support indigenous women and traditionalknowledge.
In the Convention on theElimination of All Forms of DiscriminationAgainst Women (CEDAW), which was adoptedin 1979 by the UN General Assembly and isconsidered to be a Women’s Global Bill on HumanRights, governments also agreed to payspecial attention to rural women’s needs, toeliminate discrimination in rural areas, and toprovide access for women to health, social security,training and education, loans, technology,water, adequate living conditions, sanitation,housing, supply and transport. Unfortunately,governments have not met many of these recommendedsteps to realize the right to food froma gender perspective and to end discriminationagainst women, particularly in the area of agriculture.The disconnect between macroeconomicpolicymaking and women’s human rightscontinues to threaten peoples’ full realization of the right to food.
Food security
The literature on food security generally identifies three necessary elements: supply, distributionand access. Food supply is crucial, but not sufficient to achieve food security. It matters wherethe food comes from, when it is available on themarket, and whether it supplements or displaceslocal production. For example, increased foodsupply through food imports that support domestic production and add value to existing foodchains will strengthen food security. Conversely,imports can undermine local food production ifthey arrive at harvest time, or create demand fora cheaper, even if inferior product. In turn, this diminishes local incomefor farmers and the farm labor they employ, andhas been shown to increase poverty in affectedareas.
In the area of distribution, how much ofwhat type of food farmers will be able to selldepends on farmers’ access to markets. Thisincludes their ability to meet standards for exportor national supermarket chains, and whetherthey have the means to store, process and transportfood beyond the local market. Distributionis also driven by demand—farmers with accessto urban markets are generally at a considerableadvantage to those producing in remote areaswhere the local consumer base is likely to bepoor, and where, to reach a richer market, poorinfrastructure and limited means of transportationcan prove an insurmountable barrier.
Finally,access to food is often dependent on largersocial determinants, including political dynamics,poverty and social status, which themselves areinterconnected.Ensuring that safe, healthy food is availableto women and children is a prerequisite forachieving food security and improving livelihoodsoverall. As part of this, governments needto put in place the infrastructure to supply anddistribute food even in remote areas; local markets,state-led programs to regulate food standards,national food reserves are a few of thepossible tools.
Water is also crucial to the supply of safe,healthy food. Irrigated agriculture accounts forapproximately 70 percent of total water withdrawalin the world; in many low-income countriesagriculture accounts for as much as 90 percentof water use. It has been estimated thatagricultural production needs to increase significantly to meet the food, fiber and fuel needs ofthe world‘s growing populations and that worlddemand for water will double by 2050. At thesame time, water available for agriculture is decliningbecause of a combination of decreasedavailability of good-quality water and greatercompetition for available water.
Traditionally,women in the rural sector have been both thewater carriers and food providers. Research isneeded to understand how shifts in agriculturewill affect water availability and healthy foodsupply from a gender perspective.Ensuring that women producers have accessto technology, land and credit is another majorchallenge for governments seeking to achievefood security. Women in agriculture in developing countriesalso face real challenges with the outbreak of the HIV/AIDS epidemic. Ninety-five percent ofpeople living with HIV and dying of AIDS arein developing countries. The overwhelmingmajority are rural poor in the prime of their lives(15-49), and women outnumber men.For example, in Africa there are 13 affected womenper 10 infected men. In sub-Saharan Africa,HIV/AIDS is depleting the region of its foodproducers and farmers. Women have a particularburden: as caregivers in the household, they areresponsible for the care of sick household members.The number of children heading householdsis also increasing. The rural community also bears a significant burden, as those whocontract the virus in urban areas tend to moveback to their villages when they get sick to receivefamily care. HIV/AIDS places very significantstress on the family, on food production, employmentand access to food. Lack of proper care forthis disease and other illnesses, coupled with cutsin rural extension programs that formerly providedhealthcare in rural areashave increased women’swork burden and are threatening food security.
The increase in female-headed householdsis another of the many challenges related to foodproduction, provision and supply. For example,approximately one third of all rural householdsin sub-Saharan Africa are headed by women.Because the average female-headed householdhas less land and capital than households headedby men, the increase in female-headed householdsis correlated with an increase in food insecurityand malnutrition more generally.Indigenous women face particular challengesas one of the most oppressed and impoverishedsectors of society. As custodians of traditionalknowledge, indigenous women have a criticalrelationship with natural resources, the land,water, and food security. Yet they face particulardisadvantages as a group that is excluded fromthe assumptions and policies created under thedominant economic growth models.
Demanding food sovereignty
Many NGOs, networks, social movements andeven governments argue that thereis an urgent need to strengthen existing definitionsof food security as well as a need to supportfood sovereignty. The concept of food securitydoes not challenge the negative effects thattrade and investment policies have on rural communities.In effect, food security is applied as atechnical standard (how many calories per householdor person in a given region) that ignoresthe politics of food production, distribution andaccess. Many food security advocates maintaina neutral position on which overall economicframework can best support the right to food.
Food sovereignty advocates, on the other hand,believe the policy emphasis on open and deregulatedmarkets, as well as on one-size-fits-all rulesfor trade, undermines farmers’ livelihoods andthereby local food security. At the same time,they see the existing rules as strengthening thealready dominant control of food corporations.Food sovereignty provides a framework foractivists to reclaim the political struggle essentialto shaping a fairer and more sustainable foodsystem. Food sovereignty was introduced to themultilateral system in 1996 during the preparationsfor the World Food Summit; delegatesasserted the rights of countries to determine theirfood and agricultural policies at the nationallevel, as part of a participatory and democraticprocess, including the right to safeguard nationaldevelopment priorities, even if they require socalled“barriers to trade.”
Women and global agriculture
A shift over time toward privatization, deregulationand more open trade has resulted in overproductionof commodities, volatile and oftencripplingly low commodity prices and a markedincrease in market concentration in agriculturalinputs (seeds, fertilizers, farm equipment, among others),food processing, food distribution and foodretail. Land holdings in many parts of the worldhave become more concentrated. In the globalNorth, the trend is toward both smaller farms(usually hobby farms owned by people whoseincome is from non-agricultural activities) andmuch larger farms, where virtually all food productionis concentrated. Most food in the globalNorth is grown on the ever-larger farms. In manyparts of the global South, poor and subsistencefarmers are losing their land, or are abandoningit to search for income in the cities, with negativeconsequences for local food security, rural development,the environment and peoples’ livelihoods.
Deregulation as a means to open newmarkets has had serious consequences for farmers,especially in developing countries. Theamendment (or more usually, abolition) of suchpolicies as commodity boards, quantitative restrictionson imports, export taxes, price stabilizationpolicies, production incentives (or restrictions),production subsidies, or capital controlshave all changed market conditions for farmerseverywhere. Locking in tariff reductions hasreduced the availability of funds for agriculturalinvestment and the provision of agriculture-relatedservices. Although open to abuse, tariffsoffer governments a way to protect their agriculturalindustry from sharp price swings orsurges in imports. Their removal strips countriesof safeguards and increases their vulnerability toglobal price shifts. Decreases in tariffs also reduceimportant revenues that could be used for theprovision of basic services. Deregulation tosupport increased trade has allowed corporationsto set prices and standards for economic productionthat hinders, if not reverses, farmer-basedinitiatives such as domestic support, cooperativesand publicly mandated state-trading enterprises.Policy makers expected increased competitionto lead to new opportunities for farmers, but thereality has been more complicated, especially forresource-poor and subsistence farmers.
Farmers in the global South are disadvantagedin the food system by a variety of factors.First, they lack capital, which reduces the amountof acreage they own and their ability to storefood. Because of the expense of storing harvestedproduction and even transporting it to distantmarkets, farmers end up being able to sell theircrops only to local markets, at lower prices thanthe cost of production. Farmers and peasantcommunities find it increasingly difficult to own,exchange and breed new varieties of seeds dueto runaway patenting, the lack of disclosure ofthe origin of traditional knowledge, bio-piracy oftraditional plant varieties and stringent seedpurity standards.
The thirty largest supermarket chains compriseone third of global food sales. These globalfood supply chains have created new pressuresfor labour-intensive exports from low-cost locations;the result is a dramatic increase in thenumber of producers competing to sell to theleading retailers and brand names. This places negative pressure on producers and workers tomeet global consumer trends that are being setby the retailers themselves. Women face particular constraints as a resultof deregulation and market concentration in foodand agriculture. Women continue to have moredifficulty than men to get good land, credit, trainingand access to markets. They lack access tothe equipment required for food production ona large scale, and they have difficulty obtainingloans. As farmer supports and supply managementprograms have been dismantled throughderegulation policies, the costs for small farmersto produce increasingly outweigh the net gains.Women producers are increasinglyunable to continue in small farming,and many have moved to other sectors such ashotel operations and tourism. Others who havestayed in agriculture no longer own their smallplots of land or cultivate their own crops but areincreasingly given jobs in packing and processing.
In terms of new employment in the agri-food system, many women are finding wagedwork in the non-traditional agricultural exportsector (NTAEs) and in export processing factoriesas pickers, sorters, graders and packers. Fresh and processed fruits, vegetables, flowers and nuts represent agrowing global market that supplies Northerndemand for value-added products. Women represent the majority of workers in flowers andspecialty fruits in Colombia, Ecuador, Kenya andZimbabwe, among others. African exports gomainly to Europe, while Latin American exportsgo primarily to the United States.
The elimination of public services such ashealthcare and education increases the workloadfor women, as they are the traditional providersof these services. Many women farmers and peasantworkers are coping with diminishing returnsfor their production, with increased pressure toexpand export production at the expense ofgrowing food for their households, and with theloss of basic services that supported the household’swell-being, especially health and educationservices. The situation for some has becomedesperate. Researchershave determined that economic developmentsof the last two decades, including privatizationand cuts to rural health extensionprograms, have contributed to this situation.
“Not so free” trade
While there are someclear benefits to open markets, such as access tofood when crops fail and, often, increased consumer choices, there are also significant problemsrelated to deregulating trade. The “one-size-fitsall”approach to agricultural liberalization does not reflect the reality of the dramatic variancesamong countries, individuals and the environmentrelative to politics, society and the economy.
Although trade liberalization reforms were supposedto ensure growth and development, formany countries these results have not been achieved.Even as the World Bank continues to supportthe liberalization agenda, it has acknowledgedthat the gains from agricultural liberalization indeveloping countries have been marginal. Additionally, poverty hasincreased more in countries that have liberalized.There are different factors that explain whytrade liberalization does not necessarily lead topoverty reduction, although it can. One reasonis that the global commodity crisis has resultedin commodity-dependent countries receivingless income for their exports as prices have declined drastically over time. Weakenedcommodity regulations have contributedto worsened market price volatility beyond whatcan be explained by supply and demand equations.
The decline in commodity prices has allowedcountries like the U.S. to export commodities,including maize, soybeans, rice and cotton, at lessthan cost of production prices. This has resultedin many developing countries’ importingstaple crops they once were able to grow themselves.Food aid programs supported by World Trade Organization (WTO) rules have also allowed countries to sell surpluscommodities on open markets in recipientcountries to generate funds. Rather than servingas an emergency response, food aid currentlyrepresents a hidden market for countries such asthe United States to unload their overproducedgrains. This is undermining farmers’ ability tosupport themselves and threatens food security.The Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policyhas referred to this practice as “global dumping.”Women are the main producers of the world’sstaple crops, providing up to 90 percent of therural poor’s food intake. Low commodityprices and cuts in tariffs therefore have an impact on women’slivelihoods. Developingcountries have experienced the devastating impactof unstable world prices for commodityexports compounded by eroded tariff preferencesand poor special and different treatmentprovisions as part of the WTO Agreement on Agriculture (AoA). Supposed commitments toward food security and rural development through special and differential treatment have not moved forward.
There is another dimension to trade andinvestment policy that affects women: barriersto labor mobility. Although capital is increasinglymobile within the multilateral tradingsystem, labour is not. This has been a source ofcontention between Southern governments, keenfor the remittances that their workers send homefrom overseas, and Northern governments, copingwith strong political resistance to increasedimmigration. Where there are provisions for mobility, theyare focused on protections for skilled labor. Yetagricultural producers are generally considered “unskilled,” leaving those who have lost workin the rural sector with less opportunity for legal migration to find work. At the same time thatmigration for “unskilled” workers is rarely legalor easy, there has been a notable increase in themigration of both women and men globally (in2005, the United Nations estimated it to bemore than 175 million and growing). Thismigration is rural to urban within countries,interregional and from the global South to theNorth. Those migrating often face extremely difficult situations with not even basic protectionof their human rights.
Migration is a complicated issue, deservingserious attention, particularly as it relates topoverty, human rights and security. On the otherhand, one cannot help but note that many governmentsallow for trade rules that support deregulatedfood systems yet at the same timeestablish regulations that limit opportunities for farm workers and peasants to find a better lifeelsewhere when their own agricultural economiesbreak down.